iar!"

He laughed, well content with the moment and the situation, well
content with his unwilling companion just as she was.

"And do you know that what I told you this afternoon was true?" he
countered cheerfully. "You're just like my blazing old Grandy!
Instead of being my grandfather he ought to be yours. By golly, Miss
Terry Pert," teasing the blood higher into her cheeks with his
laughter, "that might be arranged, too! Mightn't it? You and I----"

"Oh!" cried Terry, and he had no doubts about her meaning what she
said. "Oh, I hate you! Yes, worse than I hate old Hell-Fire: he keeps
out of my trail, anyway. And you, you big bully, you woman-fighter,
you--you----"

Just in time he guessed her purpose and threw out his hand across her
steering-wheel and grasped her right hand. The car swerved dangerously
a moment, then came back to its steady course as Steve's other hand
closed over Terry's left. Slowly, putting his greater strength gently
against hers, he took her automatic from her.

"Thirty-eight calibre?" he said coolly. "There's nothing little
about your way of doing things, is there? And you meant to drill a
hole through me, I'm bound!"

Terry's face gleamed white in the pale light; and he knew from the look
in her eyes as they seemed fairly to clash with his, that it was the
white of sheer rage.

"I'd just as lief blow your head off as shoot a rattlesnake," she
announced crisply.

"I believe you," he grunted. "Just the same, if you'd only----"

"Oh, shut up!" she cried, shaking his hand free from hers on the wheel
and driving on recklessly.

"I would like to mention," came an uncertain voice from a very pale
Japanese, "that I must walk on my feet. I am most regretful----"

"Oh, shut up!" cried Terry. "Shut up!"

And for the rest of the ride both Iki and Steve Packard were silent.

CHAPTER XI

THE TEMPTING OF YELLOW BARBEE

"Here's where I get down," said Steve after a very long silence during
which he watched Terry's pretty, puckered face while Terry, gripping
her wheel, recklessly assumed the responsibilities of their three
lives, hurling the car on through the moonlit night.

Iki, breathing every now and then a long quivering sigh and forgetting
to breathe betweenwhiles, held on tightly with both hands.

"Here's where I get down," said Steve again. Here the road followed
the line of his north fence; less than a mile to the southward he could
see a light like a fa